How to combat consultation fatigue

Planning, 8 August 2008

At the end of any community planning activity, be it a workshop, exhibition or town meeting, it is good practice to ask participants whether they thought it worthwhile.

Mostly the response will be positive, because practitioners have become adept at making such activity enjoyable and getting involved in planning the future of one's community is inherently interesting. People frequently comment that "more such events should be held", "it showed that consultation really can work" and "it was great to have all the people involved in the issue at the same place at the same time".

But the long-term picture may not be so rosy. Ask the same people the same question a year later and the value of the activity may not be so apparent. "Not heard anything more about it", "whatever happened to that project?" and "what a waste of time that was" are likely to be more common responses.

Even more depressing is that people are likely to be cynical about taking part in similar future exercises. The official excuse for this sad state of affairs is "consultation fatigue". But in reality it is fatigue from bad consultation that is not part of a coherent strategy and is not followed up so that people feel, probably correctly, that nothing has been achieved by their effort.

There is no longer any excuse for this. A wealth of experience and good practice material exists and general principles have been identified which apply universally. The ever-expanding menu of community engagement approaches includes new types of interaction, events and support frameworks. There is a growing body of case study material and guidance to be found on the community planning website funded by the DCLG.

The key to success is to select an appropriate sequence of methods to form a coherent overall strategy that suits the specific situation that a community faces. The main objective will usually be practical, such as creating a masterplan to guide development in an area, finding the best uses for a particular plot of land or building or making local transport more sustainable. Where the process is well organised local communities can be fully involved in even highly complex planning issues, reaping huge benefits in the quality of the end product, citizen morale and even development value.

The latest case study concerns Caterham Barracks Village in Surrey, where masterplanner John Thompson & Partners claims that the development value of the 16ha site was increased by £50 million and £2.5 million of community benefits were created as a direct result. The website is being upgraded to provide more guidance on selecting the best methods for involving communities at the various stages of the statutory planning process, particularly relating to new housing.

Nick Wates is a community planning consultant and site editor of www.communityplanning.net. If you have any useful tips or good case studies to contribute, please email nick@nickwates.co.uk.